The future of this purchase.

[sundayx Veteran]

I know, if I pursue a "wait" stance, I'll never have the urge to buy hardware cause new things are constantly coming. But think about this:

If I get a system now, DX10.1 is around the corner, PCIE2.0 is around the corner, DDR3 is around the corner like literally, there is really a bottleneck right? Even though I have the urge to buy a 8800GT (not cheap btw), in 2 years will all games be near unplayable or be restricted by the early adoption?

[Kushan]

I'd wait until early next year. That's when a lot of these new things are due and is probably the best bet for hardware.

As for the 8800GT, it'll be grand for years to come. I have a 6800 that I've had since HL2 came out and so far the only thing to give me serious trouble is Crysis. Bioshock ran like a dream and thanks to the slow adaptation of DX10, I'd say you'll get an extra year out of your 8800.

[chconline Veteran]

Um they aren't around the corner, they are in already :p I've been using DDR3 (OCZ Platinum PC3-12800 Enhanced Bandwidth, but I changed to Super Talent Project X DDR3-1800 and put the OCZ in my other comptuer) since September and PCIe 2.0 (On my Asus P5E3-Deluxe/WiFi-AP@n) since the beginning of October. X38 based boards are widely available and so are DDR3 RAM, they simply aren't cheap, that's about it.

[sundayx Veteran]

From what I just read, DDR3 is not a good investment now because it had the same performance, but at a heftier price. However in the future (late 2008) when clocks and latency improve, and price reduced, then it will be a good replacement. Therefore DDR2 is still the best buy as of now until mid/end 2008.

However for the 8800GT, it is a PCIE2.0 compatible card, so I'll just switch the motherboard if I really have to, but the concern is DX10.1, which it doesn't support (please enlighten me) therefore HD3850 card would probably be a better investment at this point in time.

This is based on my research, I hope I could help other people out who's on the same stance. However I'm still considering what to adopt in my build.

[chconline Veteran]

DDR3 does cost way too much, what I am trying to say is that they are readily available (At a cost) :p I doubt that performance will improve, since they are good as they are -- the only thing that will change is better processors that could accommodate them. Latencies don't mean much on Core 2 platform at the moment.

PCIe 2.0 is 100% backwards compatible. (Y)

[sundayx Veteran]

But DX10 is not forward compatible with 10.1. It seems like a small insignificant increment, but it's still a new standard is product development. If I dish out 300 for a card that is not the standard, seems like its unnecessary.

[Kushan]

Don't worry about DX10.1, that will make absolutely no difference to you down the line.

All DX10.1 is (for the most part) is a change to the requirements Microsoft has set out that the cards must comply to in order to use the DX10.1 tag. There's nothing new in it that will make a difference to games (like a new shader model or whatever) and even if there really was, it wont be used in games for years to come. Developers barely even support DX10 at the moment, so when they do decide to roll out support for it and make it a requirement, it'll only be when the install base is big enough and thus they'll cover ALL DX10 devices, even if it's not DX10.1.

[NienorGT]

Well, DX 10.1 will be released in Vista SP1. And I don't know how it will be used in games but unlike Kushan said, there Shader Models 4.1 with that.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/29/amd...x_10/page3.html

This picture look promising though:

[Kushan]

Ahh, I stand corrected on that one, my bad. But seriously, I wouldn't worry about the new version making your card out of date any time soon.

[HyBry]

tighter AA specs should also be good...

[sundayx Veteran]

This is a really compelling debate in my mind right now, sacrifice performance for compatibility (eventually) or just wait and see. SM4 seems to be really good, so are tighter AA definitions.

[Kushan]

Perhaps I'm being overly skeptical here, but I wouldn't trust that picture that ATI made. It shows global illumination on/off, not a difference between DX10 and DX10.1. I'm pretty sure the same effect can be done on DX10, DX9 and even OpenGL 1.2.

[HyBry]

DX10.1 probbly will have no use in next year or maybe even 2 but once the games do start rolling out it should be a good thing..

Problem by then might be that todays top dx10.1 cards might not be good enough any more...

[sundayx Veteran]

I've justified myself to go for the 8800GT. By the time 10.1 is mainstream, 8800GT will under perform.

[HyBry]

^^ that will probabbly be the case and considering that available 10.1 cards perform worse then 8800GT, well.. let's just say we have a winner.. lol